Windows 7 is specially engineered for speed. It is built to be fast. Faster than any of its preceding Windows Operating Systems. While it may be faster than Windows Vista by a good sized margin, many users remain unsatisfied by the speed of Windows 7. Even with a fully updated hardware installation of Windows 7 you could still be longing for more speed. We aim to make your Windows 7 system run faster than you could remember it ever being.

If you are looking for a little extra speed and a performance, please follow through this guide to get Windows 7 to turbo speed! This guide can really get you the performance and speed up to where you want it.

First, you should be aware of the minimum requirements needed to operate on Windows 7:

1.) 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)

2.) 16GB of available disk space

3.) 1GB of main memory total

4.) A DVD – R/W drive

5.) Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory

Actually, the DX9 graphics card is not necessity because it is more for appearance features rather than performance features.

Let’s get straight into the guide so you can speed up that Windows 7 computer!

1. Disable Any Unneeded Visual Effects

To begin, right-click on the Computer icon on your Desktop and select “Properties” from the menu that appears

Select “Advanced System Settings” from the left pane to view the System Properties Window

Click the “Advanced” tab along the top of that window, then click “Settings” listed under “Performance”. Select “Custom:” options from there.

In that window uncheck all the options and make sure that only the last 4 options are checked.

– Optionally you could only leave the last choices checked

Lastly, log off of your system and log back in for changes to take effect

Turning off the aero effects in Windows 7 is a good start but you get even better results when you turn off many of the other unwanted visual effects.

2. Turn off the User Account Control (UAC) Feature

Open the Control Panel and select “User Accounts and Family Safety” then “User Account”.

Select the User Account Control Settings link

Simply click-and-drag the slider until it reaches “Never Notify”

Click “OK” and restart your computer for changes to take effect

The UAC feature in Windows 7 is found annoying by many users especially those that are daily users of their computer.

3. Disable Search Indexing Feature

Right-click the Computer icon on your Desktop and select “Manage” from the menu that appears

Select “Services and Applications” from the Computer Management Window and click “Services”

You will then see a list of services available – locate the Windows Search on that screen

Right-click “Windows Search” from that list and click “Properties”

The Windows Search Properties window will appear

Select “Disabled” from the drop-down menu for Startup Type

Click “Apply” and “OK”

Now the startup feature for Search Indexing in Windows 7 has been disabled.

The Windows 7 Search Indexing feature was created so that the computer would keep records of the files that have previously been searched so items can be located quicker the next time you search them. This feature is really only useful if search for things very frequently and need them searched as fast as possible on your system after repeatedly requesting a search on that item.

If you only occasionally perform a system search for files, downloads, etc. then the Search Index Feature, especially when selected to run at system startup can eat away at memory and system resources without you even knowing it’s running.

If you would like to disable the Search Indexing Feature all together in Windows 7 you can by setting the Search Indexing Service to “Manual”. That is along with following the above steps under Disable Search Indexing Feature.

4. Disable Unwanted Services

A lot of the features and services offered with Windows 7 operating systems are not necessary for everyday use. There are some; however, that are necessary and not safe to be turned off or disabled. But things like the Print Spooler are only needed when printed a document or picture. This is something that you can safely turn off on a regular basis and then turn on when going to print something. Below are 10 more things in Windows 7 that you can safely disable.

Secondary Logon

Windows Error Reporting Service

Desktop Window Session Manager (leave on if you want aero effects)

TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper

Distributing Link Tracking Client

Offline Files

Diagnostic Policy Service

Protected Storage

IP Helper

Application Experience

Without these always running you can really improve the speed on your Windows 7 system.

5. Set Up the Ready Boost Service

You will need a USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive that is Ready Boost compatible in order to configure the Ready Boost feature.

After inserting the USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive open it by going to Computer and right-click it and select “Ready Boost” from the options

Check the “Use this Device” checkbox.

You can choose how much space on your USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive you would like used as RAM

Windows 7 offers the Ready Boost feature so that you can use your USB/Highspeed Flash/Pendrive as extra RAM. This one step improves the speed and performance by a good margin.

6. Disable the Sidebar

Right-click on the sidebar and click “Properties” from the menu

When the Properties window appears uncheck the box that says “Start Sidebar when Windows Starts”

Now the sidebar will not appear when you start your computer or log in to Windows. Disabling this feature will not only make your computer run faster in general but it will get you to a fast startup.

7. Turn off the Thumbnail Preview Feature

Open your Computer and select the “Organize” drop-down menu to select “Folder and Search Options”

In the Files and Folders section select the View tab and check the box showing “Always Show Icons, Never Thumbnails”.

Displaying thumbnails of folders rather than icons can take up more space and time than just icons. So turning off the thumbnail preview option saves you both!

8. Disable the Aero Theme

Right-click any space on your Desktop and select “Personalize” from the menu that appears

Open the Window Color tab

Uncheck the box that says “Enable Transparency” and then select “Open Classic Appearance Properties for More Options”

A new window will appear, select a Standard or Basic them from it. (Standard Windows 7 theme is a good choice)

If you are looking for aesthetics rather than performance you can keep the aero user interface. While it obviously adds luster to the appearance of things it also takes up a lot of space on the graphics and video cards. You can check this out yourself by viewing its memory consumption when aero theme is both on and off to see the difference.

9. Disable Aero Peek and Aero Snap

Go to your Control Panel of Windows 7 and double-click the “Ease of Access Center” icon.

Select “Make It Easier to Focus on Tasks” listed near the bottom

Uncheck the box that says “Prevent Windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen”

Right-click on the Windows 7 taskbar and click “Properties” from the menu that appears

Lastly, uncheck the box that says “User Aero Peek to Preview the Desktop”

Windows 7 has these new features designed to do things you already did in XP and Vista just in new ways. Aero Snap allows you to Maximize, Minimize and Resize your windows simply by dragging-and-dropping at screen corners.

Aero Peek is pretty much the same as the “Show Desktop” icon from Windows XP and Windows Vista. It hides all of your windows to show a clean desktop and icons.

10. Disable Password Protection

Users that set up passwords to access their account in Windows 7 spend a few seconds every time they start up or log in to enter that password. If you are the only person who uses your computer my opinion is that you don’t really need this feature. I opt for getting on my account quickly. When I previously had a password set and someone wanted on my computer I would just give out the password anyway so it was completely useless and took extra time to log in every day.

11. Disable Unwanted Startup Items

Open the Windows button and type “msconfig” in the Run option of the start menu and press Enter

This opens the System Configuration Utility window

Select the Startup tab and uncheck all items that you do not need to run automatically when the computer starts up

This can drastically improve startup time and even running time if you have had a lot of things running when your computer starts. This often happens automatically when several things have been downloaded and installed onto your computer.

12. Change your Power Plan to Maximum Performance

Open your Control Panel and double-click the “Power Options” icon

Scroll down to see the Show Additional Plans option and select “High Performance” power plan to activate it.

Further tweaking can be done to this by selecting the Advanced Settings

13. Turn off Unwanted Windows 7 Features

Open your Control Panel and select “Programs and Features”

Select the “Turn Windows features On or Off” from the left panel

Uncheck all of the features that you do not use

Restart your computer for the changes to take effect

There are several features that Windows 7 offers that many users don’t need or use often so by disabling them you are making more room for running time on things you do use frequently.

14. Disable the Screen Saver and Wallpaper

Right-click any blank space on your Desktop and select “Personalize” from the menu that appears

Select the Screen Saver link

From the Screen Saver drop-down menu select “None” then select “Apply” then “OK”

Optionally, you can keep some of your favorite sounds turned on and select which sounds to disable, but keep in mind that sounds played during startup, shutdown, logon, etc. take away from performance that could be utilized better elsewhere

16. Tweak your Registry

We have a couple of articles in our PC 911 blog that have a lot of information on how you can tweak your registry to improve the speed of your computer!

17. Software to help Speed Up Windows 7

There are several software programs out there that you can use to maintain a nice, healthy system. Programs that update your hardware, programs that clear bugs, programs that clean registries and programs that remove potentially harmful information against you. Some of my favorites are listed below.

Performing all of these tasks will get your Windows 7 computer running noticeably quicker! Feel free to share more tips to speed up your system in the comments below!